Missing ballots found in Florida
WPTV-TV
Thu September 11, 2008
Area: West Palm Beach, Ft. Pierce
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida - You hate to say it, but only in Palm Beach County.
First elections officials said there were almost 3,500 ballots unaccounted for.
Now, after an intensive re-re-count by hand, they say they have 139 too many ballots when compared with the original election night total.
"We are no longer short ballots. We have more ballots," announced County Commissioner and canvassing board member Mary McCarty.
How could it happen?
Well, first the shortage. Human error, say officials.
Hundreds of ballots were uncounted during the first re-count, because precincts were broken-up into several boxes or several precincts were placed in one box.
Those tallying up the numbers may have completely skipped precingcts or parts of precincts.
"I actually think this is a horrible blessing in disguise," said McCarty, "Because it's giving us a chance to show where the vulnerablities are in the system."
As for the overage, officials say they've traced at least 110 ballots back to a single precinct in Delray Beach. Precinct 4072. A Baptist church on Military Trail.
The electronic cartridge in the voting machine recorded the votes, say officials, but they were never transfered when they reached the tabulation center.
The theory is that the remaining excess 139 ballots may have a similar explaination.
"So we will continue that process to determine if there are other cartidges that have been misread or totalled zero," said Assistant County Administrator Brad Merriman.
Meanwhile, the company that builds the voting machines, Sequoia Voting Systems, was deflecting any blame.
The compnay's representative, Phil Foster says "the cartridge is fine. Why it didn't read I do not know," suggesting another human error made on election night.
In the end, election officials say they now have 102,772 ballots in-hand.
Whether the 110 ballots from Delray Beach or the 139 from still unknown precincts would be enough to make a difference in any single race is not clear except the judge's race that got this whole re-count started.
The race between Richard Winnet and Bill Abramson ended with a spread of just 60 votes.
That's a small enough margin, perhaps, to change the outcome.
Abramson, behind in the vote, says a re-count by hand once the numbers are finalized seems in order.
"That will be the next step to make sure every ballot is counted for and every vote counts," he said.
Abramson says the most important thing is that the voters of Palm Beach County get an accurate election result.
On Monday, officials will outline policy and procedural changes they plan to make to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen again.
They also believe that over the weekend they'll be able to figure out where most, if not all, of those 139 ballots came from.
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